Author: BobBoyd

79, cancer survivor, work out 3 times a week, walk 2 hours daily. Kundalini energy rising since age 27, began writing poetry October 2023.

Reverie

A lady bug strolls across the top of my computer monitor.
I can’t tell if its pronouns are she/her or he/him.
Maybe it took gender studies in college, and it’s nonbinary.
Gnats flail in vain against my apartment window screens;
I imagine a few hot-headed ones are swearing.
A red-bellied woodpecker taps a tune on a nearby tree outside.
I think it’s an oldie, maybe Knock on Wood from 66 by Eddy Floyd.
The guppies in my aquarium swim happily going nowhere.
I think they’re hedonists living for today partying the night away.
The ceiling fan spins like a planet rotating in the cosmos;
I imagine an asteroid striking it and blasting it out of orbit.
In a reverie I find myself thinking of how in a perfect world
I would have been with the sweet looking, sweet sounding
woman who sang It’s Gonna Take a Lotta Love.

Bob Boyd

Dark Clouds

Dark clouds, inevitable in one’s life,
often related to disappointments.
Worst for me if because of a
disappointment with a woman
when dark clouds gather and
the rain falls like tears
from my eyes even though
I’m not crying on the outside.
Been through too many dark
clouds and even storms
in my life.

Maybe bad karma,
maybe random,
maybe dumb choices,
maybe bad luck.

But for me and for most
dark clouds eventually
disperse, the rain
evaporates in the healing,
rejuvenating rays
of another sunny day.
Tomorrow will be my sunny day.
Tonight’s my dark cloud.

Bob Boyd

Eminent Domain

Behold one of the darkest arts of
Government: Eminent Domain
Reminiscent of stolen Native American lands
Some cases underpaid for the seizures
Some cases of removals at gunpoint
How is it in what some politicians claim
is the greatest country in the world
we have a government perpetrating
intrusive, insensitive land grabs
And while I’m on this insidious topic,
Here’s what eminent means
“Well-known and respected, especially
for achievement in a particular field.”
I see nothing respectful
I see no achievement
I see only a particular field of stolen lands
watered with the tears of people
those lands were seized from
I see a disgraceful well-known
diabolical practice by a government
in cases not by the people but
against the people
I see broken hearts of families
who owned lands for generations
robbed regardless of forced
compensations
Eminent Domain, a
Goddamn shame.

Bob Boyd

Inspiring Little Dog

Standing in line to buy guppies in Petsmart, saw a cute
little brown and white dog jumping in front of me.

Then saw something unusual,three legs instead of four.
didn’t matter to the sprightly canine, didn’t care he
was a three-legged dog.

Impressive, inspiring how that dog adapted to his disability.
A hit by a car caused the loss of one leg, didn’t need it,
never limited him. Three just as good.

Bob Boyd

Love 8,000 Miles Across the Sea

At first she was a beautiful Asian woman in a photo
living in an archipelago 8,000 miles away.
An alluring snapshot that spoke to my lonely heart,
suggesting a thousand enchanting things.
I wondered if this exotic woman would be with me.
For two years she waited from across the sea,
talking to me every night courtesy of Skype.
On Korean Air wings I flew to her, met her in Davao,
the connection complete, the romance official,
months of romantic bliss consummated in marriage.
Had I a soothsayer been, I would have seen
five years later after I brought her to Greensboro,
the photo and the romance would have faded
into an ill fated long distance love.

Bob Boyd

When War Was Fun

Back in the 50s and 60s, war on the silver screen, valor galore.
We always won the war, exciting fun to kill enemies,
always went home singing victory songs. Rousing entertainment
while nonchalantly munching buttered popcorn and juicy fruits in
cushy movie seats. Never lost, nobody really hurt. A few died
but insignificant, unknown actors usually, their deaths
a blip on the silver screen. Besides in the movies, less personal,
less real, didn’t register. Nobody got Agent Orange, maimed,
shell shocked or PTSD. Nobody came back in wheelchairs
or missing limbs. Nam changed it all. A friend, Joe Drew,
joined the marines, unlikely candidate, gentle Joe never
got in a fight. Sweet personality seemed incapable of harming
anything. First one in my city home dead in a body bag,
lost his young life, his future in that Southeast Asian jungle.
More deaths followed. Not like the movies, many dying:
sons, daughters, brothers and fathers and mothers.
Many came home maimed in body and in mind, others
in wheelchairs, some with arms and legs blown off.
Agent Orange and PTSD plagued many. No cures.
The 50s and 60s war movies were never like that.

Bob Boyd

Alaina

Knew Alaina when she was an eleventh grade high school cheerleader, wholesome girl, fluffy blonde hair, cornflower blue eyes, a perfect figure, father a doctor, on her way to a stellar future, maybe a doctor too.
Always had a crush on her, but not good enough, wrong side of town, ill bred, family with little money, lesser social class.
Enlisted in the military, four displaced years, unscrewed my life, scrambled my mind, but took college courses part time, improved myself, my diction, my writing, and my bearing, still thought of Alaina.
Returned to my hometown, changed, an outsider, curious about Alaina.
A lowlife named Laney said she’d become a whore.
I went crazy, punched him to the ground, jumped on him and wailed until friends pulled me off.
The sacrilege of what he said, a sin against the wonderful, beautiful Alaina.
Driving through a bad part of town, gasped when I saw her swaying back and forth on the street like a weed stirring in the wind, her looks gone, hard lines etched in her face, hair unkempt, clothes ragged, eyes spaced out, her drugged out, my heart broken.
Parked my car across the street from her wondering what to do, then a greasy man in an old pick up truck stopped; she talked to him, took his money, hopped in his truck, the man drove it into a nearby alley.
I knew then what Laney said was true, felt sick, almost threw up.
Drove home heavy hearted bemoaning what happened to Alaina, couldn’t sleep that night thinking what to do, if I could save her from the streets, decided to take action the next day.
Jumped in my car, drove to where I’d seen her; she wasn’t there. Looked for her, a long anxious week. No sign of her until I found her obit: Died of an Overdose.
Alaina, Alaina, what happened to you?

Bob Boyd

Heavenly Love

I often think of you when we’re apart
And how your love mended my broken heart.

I’ve never been with a woman like you
Without an equal, wonderful and true.

A remade complete man thanks to sweet you.
The day we met, like a miracle breakthrough.

I felt a heaven awaken in me
Thanks to you the angel who had the key

That unlocked my heart like never before
With a true love that will last evermore.

Bob Boyd

Angel in Heaven

when I first saw you
astonished
speechless
I felt like I was
beholding a
bona fide
beautiful
angel
descended
from
heaven
years later when by chance
I saw you in an airport
we spoke and I learned
you were a mortal
but as beautiful as any angel
a military nurse you were
going to the war in Afghanistan
a student I was on the way to London
we promised to stay in touch
alas and tears a terrorist bomb
took you forever away from me
in that hot desert warzone
perhaps God needed another
angel in heaven
ah me
I dry
my eyes
thinking of
what might
have been

Bob Boyd

My Tormented Heart

At seventy one, sadly love seems
To have drained out of your life.
Maybe like me with age-reduced testosterone
You have age-reduced estrogen.
Maybe unlike me, older than you,
That reduction has dimmed your ardor.
But if only you could see
How the sparks of a new romance
Would set your passion ablaze,
Feeling young and in love again.
I’m standing here enamored
Offering all that and more to you.
But like many ladies your age,
For whatever reasons, you’ve
Given up on romance.
O my tormented heart.

Bob Boyd

Isn’t It Lonely Together

At first the marriage was fairy tale happy
Lovely you, fun, nice, pretty too
A good match for me, got along so well.
A new job at Hewlett Packard
New friends, soon more time away from me.
Coffee houses with girlfriends nearly every night;
Other nights visiting sisters.
At least you didn’t cheat on me, but
Me home lonely, increasingly unhappy,
Your socialization became an addiction,
My heart became increasingly lonely,
My mind began wishing I’d never married you.
A Country Western Song nailed it back then,
Isn’t It lonely Together was you and me,
Or at least me. You seemingly oblivious
And insensitively indifferent to the
heartaches you were causing me.
Every few months an argument
Your rarely home ways, my postnuptial woes.
You’d change for a few weeks then ….
Morph back into the social butterfly wife
And fly away again, home merely
Your launching pad.
The day I told you I was leaving,
Stunned, you couldn’t believe it;
You thought I’d put up with the loneliness
And unhappiness forever.
Pain outweighing pleasure time to leave,
Liberate myself from the pangs of constant desolation.
After I left, you drove all over the city looking for me
As if it wasn’t too late, but I knew if I went back with you,
I’d be lonely together again after a month or two
When you resumed your extroverted ways.

Bob Boyd

Timeless Love

her beauty erased
once a Miss America
plastic surgery
Botox and
a multitude of
age defying
lotions and
useless potions
against age
desecrations

when embracing her
her husband
closes his eyes
and pretends
she’s a beauty again
she closes her eyes
and pretends
he’s handsome again
together 40 years
they know
each other’s game
and still love
each other
their aged
wrinkled bodies
and lost looks
no deterrent to
lasting true love.

Bob Boyd

Monster Monsoon

The rain beats hard against my battered windows.
Its attacks have a dangerously foreboding sound,
Sprays of bullets intent on killing the window panes
And maybe me next if it succeeds in its quest.
Nice and safe inside, like being a kid again,
Covered in security blanket woven in warmth,
Hiding from the angry searching rain,
Cozy, warm and protected against,
The relentless monster monsoon,
That keeps beating on my trembling windows
As if it wants to get in and finish me.
Soaking me thoroughly like a fish in the sea,
Giving me a cold or maybe pneumonia.
Does the rain have a dark soul
That longs to kill me?
At last it has run out of breath
And simmered down,
Reduced to precipitation,
The beating sounds gone.
Its torrential might
Dissolved into drizzle
Before the sun shuts it down.

Bob Boyd

Ambivalence

Sometimes I think it would be nice
To have a girlfriend or a wife.

Then I think about how what is first supremely sweet
Can turn acidically sour.

I think about all the relationships and marriages
Shipwrecked on seas of disillusionment,

And wonder to myself, do I really want to take the chance,
The possibility of an abandoned love and a marooned heart.

Without doubt it can be advantageous when one becomes two,
But the tides are high and the seas can run dry.

Bob Boyd

The Fall

had a fall tonight

water on floor in Walgreens store

sprung up tough as steel

Bob Boyd

True story. There was water on the floor and I hit the floor so hard and so fast the store employers thought I’d need to have someone called or that I was something akin to mortality wounded, lol. Luckily I don’t had osteoporosis and better I fell on that slippery floor than a an elderly woman with osteoporosis; it could have been a broken hip and a hospitalization, possibly death 6 months later.

So in a way, despite the cuts on my finger and my elbow and the soreness, better me than that elderly woman.

Concerned for me, a 79-year-man, one of the employees asked me twice if I was all right. I said, “No problem. I’m tough as nails,” which is actually true, and thank God, I don’t have osteoporosis or slow reflexes. My hand and elbow took the brunt of the fall instead of worse case scenario my head and possibly death.

Addicted to 30s Music

At first, 30s music, old fashioned to me,
The bands playing for awhile before
The singer sang annoyed me.
Get to it, I thought. Don’t prolong
The best part, what I’m listening for,
The singer from the start like
Modern pop. Twenty songs
And many nights later, started
Liking the band playing first,
Appreciated the orchestration,
The magnificence of the harmony of
Instruments, the beauty of the melodies.
Now I like 30s music as much or more than
Music of my 60s and 70s generation.

Bob Boyd

Philippines Enemy Cat

In the Philippines cats get no respect,
Unpampered unlike in the US,
Feral street cats no one there wants for pets.
They leap from roof to roof on one storey
Philippines houses, a racket on the roofs.

Once as kind of a feline experiment,
I hissed at one. Big mistake.
Every time he saw me after that,
His eyes glared, his teeth bared,
and he hissed at me, an enemy.
My conscious guilty for teasing that poor cat,
I began bringing him food.
Six meals later, friends at last.

Bob Boyd

Trains

Trains roaming days and nights
Rolling on tracks clickety clack,
Horns blowing, breaks steaming,
Sometimes a steel beast roaring,
On rails all across the country.
More sights to see them on a plane
With sky and clouds your only view.
I hear trains screeching on the tracks
And feel them shaking my apartment.
Rumblings trembling my chair,
Reverberating in my back
Like a mild earthquake quaking.
I wonder where the trains are bound,
And what it would be like to be on one
Traveling to an unknown local
To start a new more exciting life
Somewhere I’ve never been.
Imagine taking a train to paradise.

Bob Boyd

New York New York

Big Apple city streets and subways less safe.
Fruit has gone sour, partake of it at your own risk.
Lunatics push you into 82,000 pounds of screeching death,
Flattens and chews you up, a cadaver in a meat grinder.
Dreadful, horrible way to go out in bloody bits and pieces,
A signature way to die on the rails from a shove in Gotham City.
Happens more and more often, like a twisted steel fad.
Street psychopaths attack and put you to sleep in the
City that never sleeps. Random attacks the thing.
Older more likely to be the next statistic, but
Anybody’s on the impromptu knock out list.
The prep probably walks while you in the ICU.
Light sentence, if any. Coddled criminals rights
More important than your insignificant citizen safety.
Illegals attacking police free to leave despite
The unwritten rule you don’t attack the
Protectors in blue or the hammer of justice
Hammers you harder, an example set.
New York of old before worms in the Big Apple,
And the bright lights of the city nights went dim
O how I mourn for you.

Bob Boyd

Diminishing Returns of Aging

What Golden Years?
Many old people getting cancer;
Cancer wards like geriatrics wards,
Longer you live the more your
Quality of life diminishes,
The more you become at risk
Of falls, some that can kill you.
More likely to die of flu related illness.
Less money more medical bills.
At some point you probably won’t be driving
You become more unsafe on the road.
Aging wrecks your breaking down body
Muscles shrink, body’s stiffens,
Skin gets ugly, wrinkles,
other marks, some scary looking,
Hopefully not cancer, but stay
Out of the blazing sun. You’re
Number one on skin cancer’s
Hit list.
Hearing and vision can be affected
Like an old machine breaking down.
People you knew or heard of
Dying more frequently.
You’re number one on
COVID’s hit list.

Bob Boyd

Lab Rats

I keep hearing aliens created us,
As if we were mere lab specimens –
Experiments.

Cannot accept this contrary notion,
As if we were not creations of –
God.

Of course because I cannot accept it
Doesn’t mean it is –
Untrue.

Nonetheless, I choose to wholeheartedly believe
Aliens implanted those notions in abductees –
Minds.

Or trolling tricksters seeking some laughs,
Maybe some attention, made up those –
Stories.

Bob Boyd

I love Cats But

I love cats
How they purr
How they meow
How the snuggle up to you
How how they look adorable
How they potty train themselves
How they are ideal for apartments
How they like to be petted all the time
How they can live in an apartment without disturbing neighbors

But

I can’t handle them jumping on tables, especially kitchen tables
I can’t handle them jumping on the sink next to drying dishes
I can’t handle how they can scratch up furniture

Maybe someday I’ll get one.

Bob Boyd

Don’t Go There

Bridgewater Triangle, a dark place where evil spirits, cryptids, and aliens dwell
Disembodied voices, feelings of dread, terrifying visions, many fear to enter there
Maybe a vortex of unholy, hellish things from this dimension and others
If ever you choose to go there, don’t be surprised if you feel afraid
To take too many steps in, and if you go too far in, you might never get out.

Bob Boyd

Conversion

Cancer and heart failure robbed him
At seventy and six years of perfect health,
His immortality evaporated, illusion exposed
Reduced to an endangered, terminal mortal.
Death sensing the opportunity drooled and circled
Like a ravenous vulture eyeballing vulnerable him.
Resigned to the inevitably of that hungry bird reaper
Consuming his tenuous mortal life someday
Decided he needed roadmaps before
His assisted departure into the Great Beyond.
Remembered NDEs he read in the seventies,
Reread about the Life Review, the White Light,
The Unconditional Love none wanted to leave,
The true home, more real, less dreamlike
Then the earthbound temporary life.
Listened to many NDEs on YouTube,
Heard about the order in the chaos,
Seen by some of the NDErs, clinically dead.
Death became the ultimate awakening.
He wanted to experience the mysteries, the wonders.
Then he read horrible NDEs of atheists, terrified,
thought they were in Hell, demons, hellfire, damnation.
Desperate, tormented, horrified, thought about Christ,
Hoping for help, suspended their hard nosed disbeliefs,
Prayed and pleaded to Christ, saw no other way out.
He heard their contrite prayers, appeared in Light,
Whooshed them out of the fires and torments of Hell.
Returned to life Believers, some became ministers.
The newly minted mortal awed by the validation
Asked Christ to forgive his sins and come into his life.
Full blown Believer miraculously morally enhanced
Looks forward to meeting Christ at the doorway to death.

Bob Boyd

Tin Hat

Given billions of planets are considered habitable
Believed life had to exist on other planets
Somewhere.

Didn’t believe all the claims of UFO sightings
And numerous abduction claims in the US
Until —

The government came clean and acknowledged
The Existence.

Now the gates of my mind have opened
And torrents of UFO and abduction stories
Pour In.

Tall Whites, Grays, Reptilians, Nordics and more,
Aliens living in the sea, underground, shape shifting,
Mutilating cows, experimenting on humans,
Impregnating young women, collecting human semen,
Colluding with the Government, might be
Advanced human Civilizations time traveling,
Benevolent or malevolent agendas. Does anyone
Know For Sure?

My mind is so flooded, so overwhelmed, with
Theories so vast, I was better off, a simpler life,
Before I put on a tin hat and gave credence
To It All.

Bob Boyd

High Value Woman

Mary Callahan lived a simple, quiet life.
Never had a lot of money, raised in a poor family,
Good, honest, noble people, supportive and kind.
Never knew the high life and its excesses,
Didn’t desire extravagances or expensive things.
Never cared for overpriced fancy restaurants,
Content with inexpensive ones minus the glitz.
Never compromised her praiseworthy ethics,
Trustworthy in her work, true in her love.
Never cheated on her devoted, faithful husband,
Married at 17, kept her vows, sacred to her.
Never paid attention when told young love doesn’t last,
Stayed married to her husband until he died at age 55.
Never married or went with another man after he died,
Believed she’d be with her husband when she passed away.
Never missed a Sunday church service,
Brought food and joy to homebound church members.
Never shirked family responsibilities,
Raised her dead daughter’s child, worked two jobs to do it,
A true and humble high value woman.

Bob Boyd

Mortality

The clock is ticking. Your life is running out.
Is that important or a thought avoided by you,
Your inescapable, destined demise?
Or most of the time do you fool yourself
Unconsciously feeling like you’ll live forever
Even though sometimes you wake up
And your mortality briefly makes you uneasy
Quickly suppressed, hidden in your mind
Too dreadful a reality to dwell upon.
Till a life threatening medical condition
Invades your body and your anxious mind
And your mortality becomes front and center.
But that possible clock stop can be liberating,
A time for great personal and spiritual growth.

Bob Boyd

Love Can Find A Way

Al and his wife Eleanor inhabited a tiny house off grid in mystical Taos, New Mexico.
For a while their lives were idyllic living off the Taos desert land
Before an obscure band of zombies, unreported by the MSM,
Their origin story unknown as mysterious as UAPs,
Roamed Taos rabidly seeking unsuspecting human prey.
While Eleanor was tending her garden of prickly pear cacti
Behind their tiny house, the sun ducked behind a dark cluster of clouds in the New Mexico skies,
A pitiful little girl zombie approached her crying and growling
Not suspecting a zombie, but thinking the child in shock, her body in tatters,
Perhaps from an awful auto accident maiming her body and mind,
Eleanor, a woman of great compassion, concerned, worried for the innocent little girl
Invited her into her house to console her and dress her wounds
And drive her to the Holy Cross Medical Center for medical attention.
Al wasn’t home at that time, hiking in the environs, enjoying the flora and the sunny day.
Before Eleanor could help the girl, she bit Eleanor on the jugular vein and
After a few unheard gurgling screams, the wound fatal, Eleanor died.
The little girl zombie feasted on her for a few moments, her young appetite easily sated
And ambled away at a frightfully fast pace for a zombie.
Eleanor rose from the dead pretty much brain dead and zombified.
Al returned home horrified; he’d seen enough zombie movies
To know Eleanor’s irreversible plight, not wanting to share her fate
He locked Eleanor out of their house and prayed for a miraculous restoration of Eleanor’s former living life every night.
After one week of Eleanor scratching and pounding on their front door,
Al missed her desperately, despite the deal breakers of her walking dead disease,
And still loving her like the in sickness and in health marriage vow they solemnly shared in a little Methodist church in Idaho
He opened the door and took her in his arms while she
Bit into his jugular and ended his free spirit life.
Somehow her romantic instincts, her wifely loyalty, survived her zombically deactivated mind.
When Al returned to life zombified, she kissed him on what remained of his face,
And they walked withered hand in withered hand to some distant neverland,
Proving even for the zombified – love can find a way.

Bob Boyd

Separation

They’d been together 44 years
until at age 70 when
her mind began to slip
and blanked out.

Then it became like
they were no
longer together –
she didn’t know him
anymore.

His heart broke at
her loss of memory,
her loss of self
recognition.

He still loved her, but
she no longer loved him or
knew who he was. Love was not
supposed to be like that.

Bob Boyd

Rasboras

Rasboras, rasboras, why is your species always on the bottom of my aquarium?
Plentiful food carefully scattered on surface of the aquarium, ignored by you.
How do you keep from starving? I never see you eat.
Since you remain alive and don’t get emaciated.
You must, no offense, be bottom feeders subsisting on fallen flakes from the surface table.
But why not go first class and swim to the top and enjoy the full buffet?
In truth, you’re a never ending submerged mystery to me.
Thought you’d be all over the tank like a bright tailed, rambunctious guppy.
You just scurry around barely above the bottom, otherwise you seem to be hiding.
A snail is more fun, a turtle more active. Maybe you’re just shy.
Despite those seeming drawbacks, you have an uncanny appeal.
Your swimming is unconventional, you dart instead of true swimming.
And unlike duller colored fish, you are an attractive strawberry color.
And I must admit in rare moments I do see you dart almost to the surface.
Maybe one of you is an anomaly or a rebel rebelling, who occasionally breaks free.
Fun to watch, cool to see, rasboras, rasboras.

Bob Boyd

Old Single Women Nonsense

Tired of old single women
I’m too old for their nonsense
lack the patience, won’t engage,
better an old monk poet,
and compassionate helper.

Sticking with poetry and Service —
loves of my life, writing poems,
helping people.

Blissful with the right woman,
finding one at my age,
risks of ongoing drama,
tensions, disappointments,
ripples in my unperturbed
tranquility.

I don’t take these women
seriously; some far too
young; some touched me,
as if interested,
means nothing,
foolish girly games
too old to play.

Having a quiet peaceful life.
raising the MGTOW banner
going full monk mode,
maybe better luck in
the afterlife, a soulmate
awaiting me, my heart,
my mind, free of the
old single woman
nonsense here.

Bob Boyd

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